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Friday, May 26, 2006
5 arrested Estrada supporters freed
MANILA -- In what appeared to be a government double take, the Department of Justice (DOJ) Thursday ordered the police to immediately release five alleged assassins of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and some top-rank Cabinet officials.
One of the five arrested claimed police tortured him and showed the bruises and contusions on his body.
Senior State Prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco said respondents Virgilio Eustaquio, chairman of the Union of the Masses for Democracy and Justice (UMDJ), Jim Cabauatan, Ruben Dionisio, Dennis Ebona, and Jose Curameng, who were charged with rebellion Wednesday, also deserved due process and a chance to answer charges against them.
"In the interest of justice, the above-named respondents are hereby ordered to undergo regular preliminary investigation to enable them to submit their respective counter-affidavits so as to answer the very serious allegations against them," Velasco said in a one-page resolution.
Following the justice department order, the men were released early Thursday evening.
Velasco, who heads the DOJ Task Force on Rebellion, set the next hearing of the case on June 6 at 2 p.m.
The respondents, who are all supporters of former President Joseph Estrada, were held in a detention facility at the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Isafp) compound in Camp Aguinaldo.
They were "abducted" last Monday on allegations that they will carry out a plan to destabilize government. Such plan allegedly involved a plot to assassinate Arroyo and four of her Cabinet members, namely National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzalez, Presidential chief of staff Mike Defensor, Public Works Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane, and Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez Sr.
It was Gonzalez who ordered the release of the suspects saying there is little evidence of conspiracy when authorities supposedly caught them in the act of rebelling against government.
Gonzalez said the pieces evidence gathered by authorities are not enough to establish probable cause.
"Based on the report, the evidence is not quite sufficient. Medyo mahina (It's quite weak), it's only circumstantial. There is now a matter of proving that there is plotting. They should be released for further investigation because the present information may not be sufficient as evidence," he said.
He noted that based on initial reports, one of the suspects, Dionisio, was included in the first rebellion case lodged against six party-list lawmakers, former senator Gregorio Honasan, top leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), renegade soldiers, and some alleged left-leaning civilians.
Dionisio was among those whose cases were lined for further investigation by the police.
The arrest of the five was reportedly based on information gathered from Delfin de Guzman, a self-confessed communist group assassin nabbed by the military in Bulacan recently, who informed them about a meeting of Dionisio with alleged plotters.
Velasco said the order to release the five Estrada supporters has nothing to do with the merits of the case.
He said the respondents should be set free for them to be able to get a lawyer who would represent them during the preliminary investigation scheduled on June 6.
He further pointed out that the five accused were not given a chance to seek legal assistance since their arrest last Monday.
Earlier, Velasco said the respondents were apprehended while allegedly in the act of planning how to carry out the assassination of the President and some Cabinet members, with Gonzalez on top of the hit list.
Authorities reportedly seized high-powered guns and ammunition from the accused.
Meanwhile, Dionisio claimed to have been tortured by those who apprehended him and his four companions.
Interviewed at the police general hospital in Camp Crame, Dionisio said he was manhandled, electrocuted, and suffocated with a plastic bag on his head to force him to admit that he was a rebel officer.
Dionisio said his interrogators wanted him to admit that he is the secretary of the Metro Rizal party committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army (CPP-NPA).
Dionisio, who the military said is the intelligence officer of the NPA's Special Operations Group in Metro Manila, lifted his shirt to show his bruised chest and belly.
The suspect, who bore wounds on his wrists caused by the handcuffs, said he was also blindfolded and hung from the ceiling while he was tortured. "They punched me numerous times. It lasted overnight," he said.
Dionisio also claimed that penis was also electrocuted by his interrogators while his head was wrapped in a plastic bag.
Senator Jose "Jinggoy" Estrada, a son of the former president, paid the five suspects a visit at the Camp Crame hospital. "They should be released. There's no case against them," he said.
The Armed Forces, for its part, asked Dionisio to file a formal complaint against military personnel who allegedly tortured him into admitting that he is a communist leader.
"That is his claim. We have yet to receive a formal complaint. If there is formal complaint, we will not condone it," said Armed Forces spokesman Jose Angel Honrado.
"The AFP assures that it will mete the necessary punishment against any military personnel who may be involved. But he cannot keep on making the accusations in television, in print," he added.
Sought for comment on Dionisio's accusation, AFP public information office chief Tristan Kison said he was reserving his reaction saying he has yet to get word from the Isafp. "That is what he said over the TV. I am going to ask the Isafp," said Kison.
Malacañang, meanwhile, feels that the actions taken by the military when it apprehended the alleged assassins before they could commit the crime "are well-justified".
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said if the lives of Cabinet members were indeed "in peril in the hands of these men, it is better that they were interdicted before they could cause serious harm to public order."
"Assassins of any ideological or criminal stripes should be stopped and this administration is determined to get at the root of these cases as well as other violent plots or slayings...This is a serious matter of criminal justice and the charges have already been filed," he added.
Bunye, who is also Presidential spokesman, said the accused still enjoyed access to media and this enabled them to present their side. He added that they have access to a legal counsel and they would also be given their day in court to defend themselves. "If they're innocent, they can prove their innocence in court," he said.
He said further that it would be better to wait for the action of the court on their case.
He shrugged off the claims of the five accused that they were tortured while undergoing interrogation by the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Bunye said it is their word against the military and it would be up to military officers to answer the allegation. (ECV/VR/JMR/Sunnex)
(May 26, 2006 issue)
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